Top stories concerning British Isles ancestral research from Irish born Scottish based professional family historian, author and tutor Chris Paton. Feel free to quote from this blog, but please credit British GENES if you do so. Should you wish to get in touch, contact me at christopherpaton @ tiscali.co.uk. Happy hunting!

MyGenShare is not a database full of records and names. It is the most extensive collection of genealogy how-to resources anywhere on the internet.

The site does proclaim that you can sign up for a free seven day trial - unfortunately, having done just that, many genealogical resources I have clicked on to view so far have told me I need to have a paid for subscription of some sort before I can access them. There are several free how-to guides though, seemingly sourced from FamilySearch, but some of those I have checked are well and truly out of date - e.g. I've just looked at one entitled Scotland, How to Find Maps: Introduction, published in 2001. A few may be of interest, however, though they are heavily geared to what you can source through the Mormons' collated family history resources, and about eleven years ago.

One useful resource I've found is a 32 part series of free-to-access tuition videos on digitisation of family history resources, and a links section, though again a few dead links are included. Amongst the subscription based resources available are an e-library of content from the Genealogical Publishing Company in the US, and a back catalogue of an American publication entitled Everton Genealogical Helper.

The site is still in Beta, so there may well be many further additions, but I've not seen too much to get too excited about just yet, at least from this side of the Atlantic. Possibly one to keep an eye on though.

UPDATE: From Barry Ewell, site organiser:

I have received several questions concerning the MyGenShare.com 7-day free trial such as:

"Why can't I see all of the MyGenShare content? Isn't there a 7-day free trial?"

If you have the same question, here is the answer:

There is a 7-day free trial. When you make a choice of a subscription level other than the "free subscription" you are given a 7-day free trial to view more content. This is an industry standard for subscription based websites. The Premium Subscription gives you access to all content on MyGenShare.com. You will be asked for a credit card number. You will have 7-days to view content before your credit card is charged. If at any time during that period of time you desire to cancel, it is very simple for you to go into your 'My Account' and click cancel.

If you choose to sign up for the MyGenShare.com Free, then you will only have access to the free content. The 7 day free trial begins only with paid subscriptions. Thank you for supporting MyGenShare.com

COMMENT: It's also an industry standard to explain such things on subscription based websites - there is no reference to this on the site's subscription page at www.mygenshare.com/subscription_levels that I can see.

2 comments:

Thanks Chris - there are so many traps with Internet searching - traps that I fear the elderly may fall in to! Did you see the article on how our reasoning or intelligence for the 'Yeah right, too good to be true' brain cell seems to diminish as we get older? I wish I'd explored that article further now?

I am Barry Ewell, The founder of MyGenShare.com. There is a 7-day free trial. When you make a choice of the subscription level other than the "Free subscription" you are given a 7-day free trial to view more content. The Premium Subscription gives you access to all content on MyGenShare.com. You will be asked for a credit card number. You will have 7-days to view content before your credit card is charged. If at any time during that period of time you desire to cancel, it is very simple you go into your My Account and click cancel and just the Free Subscription.